| Long Arms Reach for the Rim
By JOSH KRON
Published: February 19, 2011
JUBA, Sudan — His first two attempts sprung off the back of the rim, the ball careening through the air, the crowd sighing loudly. Mangistu Deng, 16, dribbled back to halfcourt, pounding the ball for his final dunk of the night.
Deng called over a friend, who stood just in front of the foul line, stiff as possible, back to him. Then Deng took off like a grasshopper into the night and soared over his friend. The fans rose to their feet. Cellphone cameras clicked.
After decades of civil war, peace has finally settled in southern Sudan. The south will soon declare independence from the north, and with this newfound freedom, the southern Sudanese are beginning to rediscover themselves, reacquaint themselves with all that has been stunted or twisted or buried under the weight of war.
Crazy for basketball is part of who they are, or were. Manute Bol, their pioneer, became an N.B.A. star a quarter-century ago. Since then, many talented players, some driven out of southern Sudan by the years of violence, have had solid collegiate careers in the United States.
With the legends came the clichés about Africans and basketball, the laughs and the bad Kevin Bacon movie. Now, though, at the dawn of peace, there appears to be emerging an exuberant re-embrace of the sport, and with it a second wave of talent to be recruited, prospects perhaps no longer seen chiefly as curiosities.
They are versatile, freakishly athletic, and with a confidence for the game. Their hero is not Bol, who died last June; it is Luol Deng, a star with the Chicago Bulls. The N.B.A. has noticed. “We are very much in tune with what’s going on in southern Sudan,” said Amadou Fall, the vice president for development with N.B.A. Africa, the league’s outreach arm. “Southern Sudan does have an abundance of tall, well-talented players. We have to pay attention.”
Two years ago, Mangistu Deng (no relation to Luol) was any other third-world teenager, stuck in the usual miserable circumstances: unrivaled poverty, violence, instability.
Now he has found a way out. Each day, Deng slips away from the daily chaos of the southern capital, Juba, to the sanctuary he has cultivated: Nimra Tilata, the hallowed basketball court near the Nile River. Now he is one of southern Sudan’s top basketball prospects and the face of a new sporting generation. He has not always had a lot in this life, but he has a place to play.
“I was born in war,” he said. “So, I thought, when I grow up, I will be a soldier. But then basketball just came. “God gave me this talent. It was not my choice. I really appreciate it.” At Nimra Tilata, he meets his friends Makur Puou and Hakim Nyang. Coach Bil Duany brings the ball, and in the midday heat, the youngsters scrimmage, and hustle and sweat. The backdrop of the independence rallies and campaign posters, the dust bowls and the meandering children fade away.
The rekindled passion for the game has been fueled in part by the return of the Sudanese basketball diaspora. Duany, who played Division I basketball at Eastern Illinois from 2004-6, is one who came back. “There are guys here with N.B.A.-caliber talent,” said Duany, who serves as a coach to many of the local boys.
The obvious attributes endure. The Dinka and Nuer tribes of southern Sudan are considered among the tallest people in the world. “South Sudanese are tall, they run well for guys of their size, and they’re very skillful,” Duany said. “They’ve passed that requirement already.” Now Duany is here to help them get to the next level. In southern Sudan, one of the poorest places in the world, the chance to play basketball may be the chance of a lifetime.
“I want to show my country I can do something,” Deng said.
Bol, a 7-foot-6 Dinka cattle herder, was the first to show what a Sudanese player could do on the world stage. He was the first African-born player to be drafted into the N.B.A., and for years, he was, if an incomplete player, a shot-blocking sensation.
Bol, though, was not just a defender on the court. He used his N.B.A. salary to help bankroll the southern Sudanese liberation movement, which fought an insurgency against the north during the civil war.
If all goes according to plan, Deng, who is 6-7; Puou, who is 16 and 6-8; and Nyang, who is 15 and 7-1, will be playing this fall at Mooseheart, a prep school in Illinois. In the United States, they will join a growing list of Duany’s recruits, including the 7-1 Chier Ajou, who has committed to New Mexico, and Peter Jurkin, a highly rated center, who is headed to Indiana.
But basketball’s long-term future here hangs on the quality and lasting nature of independence. Political separation between north and south is not yet complete, and Duany said it was difficult obtaining passports for southern players to travel and play outside the country. Although southern Sudan is unlikely to field a national basketball team by the 2012 Olympics, it hopes to compete in 2016.
For at least one night last month, the future seemed to have arrived at Nimra Tilata court. The slam-dunk contest was a carousel of spins, jabs and hang time. By the end, only one person was still standing — or floating.
The crowd stood silent as Deng rose higher, tongue out in a Jordanesque swagger, before exploding in applause as he ripped the ball through the rim. “I am waiting,” he said, days after finding out he had been accepted to Mooseheart. “Any time. Any minute. Any hour. I am ready.”
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What is this thing called butthurt? |
